Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, having unveiled the Senate health care bill now needs 60 votes to stave off a Republican filibuster and begin formal floor debate. That means getting all 58 Senate Democrats and the two independents on board for a vote set for Saturday evening. But even among the Democrats, Senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana have been cagey about whether they will support the bill.

How do Senate leaders persuade fence-sitters to vote against their own political instincts (either because they or their constituents oppose some part of the legislation or because political adversaries will use the vote against them in the next election)? What is in the Senate arm-twister’s bag of tricks — carrots as well as sticks — that’s most effective?

The Persuader in Chief

Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator, is an adviser to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

The most persuasive persuader is the president himself. “I need your help on this. This is important for our country,” are the magic words. Implicit, as all senators know, is the unspoken coda: “And, by the way, you may need my help on something for your state one of these days.”

For those worried about re-election, the party’s fund-raising hammer may be pressure enough.

For those whose principal concern is their re-election, behind the pressure from the majority leader and the president is the hammer of fund-raising by the party re-election committees and the White House.

For those whose motives are less self-interested, the ideal of the national interest is more motivating. In both cases having facts and persuasive arguments to take home, especially in this age of mass cable and blog misinformation, is always helpful. In the final analysis, one simply hopes conscience, integrity and statesmanship prevail.

With Republican opposition to the health care legislation and a filibuster-happy Senate, Democrats need to be united or they will lose. The question for Senator Reid is what tactics can he draw on when each member has procedural power to stifle legislation.

In Johnson’s arsenal: ‘The Treatment’ and expert logrolling.

Lyndon Johnson, who served as majority leader from 1955 to 1961, was extremely effective. While partisan polarization was not as intense in that era and the filibuster was used only on select pieces of legislation, he governed an institution where autonomous committee leaders ruled their own fiefdoms and the divisions within the Democratic Party, between North and South, were more severe than today. And Republicans spent much of the 1950s railing against Democrats for being weak in the war against communism.

Johnson relied on two main tactics. The first involved direct persuasion, or “The Treatment.” He didn’t delegate his lobbying to other people. Instead he took on the job himself. When searching for a vote, Johnson confronted colleagues in the Senate hallways. He cornered them and leaned into their face as he explained why he needed their vote. He would pull out facts and figures from his pockets, refusing to budge until he heard that they were with him.

According to the reporters Evans and Novak in their 1966 book about Lyndon Johnson: “Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling.”

But direct persuasion could go only so far. Johnson was also a big believer in using logrolls to obtain a vote. In 1957, Johnson pushed for a civil rights bill, the first major piece of civil legislation on this matter since Reconstruction. The primary opponents were Southerners, led by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia.

Johnson persuaded Russell not to filibuster by saying that pressure for some kind of bill was impossible to block and that he could ensure the scale of the legislation would be limited. The bill was also essential if Johnson ever wanted to win the White House, which Russell supported.

As Robert Caro recounted in vivid detail, Johnson cut an important deal with Western legislators over the Hells Canyon dam on the Snake River in Idaho. The proposal had been rejected one year earlier. Johnson persuaded a handful of Southerners, who had traditionally voted against the bill, to vote in favor of the legislation if some Westerners agreed to support compromises to civil rights that would water down the bill.

Russell explained that Johnson “put together sort of a gentleman’s agreement where about four of us would vote for the high dam at Hells Canyon and about four of the fellows on the other side would vote with us.”

While Johnson could not stop the South Carolina Democrat Strom Thurmond from filibustering, he was able to put together a coalition that allowed the bill to come up for a vote and pass.

When Johnson was president he used many of these same tactics from the White House. Added to the mix was his willingness to allow legislative dealmakers to claim credit for legislation, such as the Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen with civil rights in 1964 and the House Ways and Means Committee chairman Wilbur Mills with Medicare in 1965.

In these final weeks of this health care debate, Senator Reid needs to channel as much as Johnson as possible. He has already started to do this by proposing a Senate bill that undercuts many of the conservative arguments that have been made against the legislation in terms of deficits and cost. Yet there is a far way to go. He will have to prove his chops by leaning, cajoling and bargaining to make sure that the wavering Democrats come over to his side.

Reid Is No L.B.J.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

When George Mitchell decided to retire from his position as majority leader of the Senate, he interviewed to become commissioner of baseball. Afterward, the story goes, a friend said to him, “George, why on earth would you want that job? You would be answering to 28 of the largest, most out-of-control egos in the world.” Mitchell replied: “That would be a 72 percent reduction from my current job.”

Senator Reid can offer compelling appeals, but the giant egos of the Senate tend to brush off such appeals.

Senator Harry Reid now has the headache of trying to convince some of the giant egos in the Senate that the national interest, or at least for many of his colleagues, the Democrats’ interest, lies in swallowing hard, bracing for the inevitable vicious attack ads and broadsides from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al, and voting to let the health reform bill first go forward for debate and amendment, and then be allowed to come to a final vote, if not to vote for the bill itself.

Senator Reid will have plenty of help, including from President Obama, a friend and former colleague of many of the recalcitrants, and the vice president, Joe Biden, a friend and former colleague of them with much longer standing.

Senator Reid can also offer some compelling appeals to his colleagues. In 1994, the failure of Democrats to enact health reform capped a two-year effort of frustration over major policies; voters looked at a Democratic Party controlling the presidency, the Senate and the House and expected action without excuses. Inaction led to a huge backlash and the loss of both houses. It took 12 years to climb out of the minority ditch. In this case, the stakes are just as high, and health reform, like 1994, will be the signature issue that defines the ability, or inability, to govern.

But — and it is a big, big but — the giant egos of the Senate tend to brush off such appeals, in part because they think of their own importance and ideas, in part because they are pushed hard by interests within their own state (think Senator Joe Lieberman and Connecticut insurance companies) and in part because in a wholly individualized body with 100 fiefdoms, the tools a leader or president can use to get giant egos to do what they otherwise do not want to do are very limited.

You can’t stop a senator from traveling. It is nearly impossible to boot senators off committees or take away plum assignments, since none of the 100 want to see such precedents, and because when the numbers are so tight, you can lose the individual on too many other close issues down the road. Force of leadership personality used to work — look at Lyndon Johnson. But Harry Reid is no L.B.J. — and even L.B.J. would be frustrated by the contemporary Senate.

Saving the President

Vin Weber, managing partner of Clark & Weinstock, a lobbying firm, was a member of Congress from 1981 to 1993. He was policy chairman for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2008.

Every administration eventually uses the “out on a limb” strategy effectively. The president, it’s argued, is “way out on a limb for this policy, and you can’t saw the branch off from under him.” This is maddening to reluctant members of Congress because they know that the administration has consciously put the president “out on a limb.”

The ‘out on a limb’ argument may well work for the health care bill.

But it doesn’t matter. The pollsters then weigh in saying that 1) nothing is more important to the president’s party than the presidential approval rating, and 2) presidential approval hinges on his ability to dominate the Congress.

This line of argument, more than more mundane blandishments, is why health care reform will most likely pass.